Jebel Ali Hills — freehold villa and mixed-use plots in southern Dubai

Jebel Ali Hills is the most unusual entry in the Meraas portfolio, and it is worth being direct about why. Everywhere else the developer sells a finished or nearly finished home. Here it sells land. The offer is off-plan freehold plots across two zones, split between residential villa plots and mixed-use building plots, and the buyer is the one who commissions the design and appoints the contractor. Meraas states the build envelopes: ground plus one storey for the residential plots, and ground plus four for the residential and mixed-use options, with designs able to be adapted to what the buyer wants to put on them.

The published information stops close to there. Meraas describes residential and retail amenities and a range of parkside settings arriving in time, and places the site near visitor attractions, established communities and transport links, but it does not publish drive times, a masterplan schedule, plot sizes or a price list on this page. We would rather say that plainly than dress it up. What the developer does publish is construction progress on the infrastructure and landscaping, and that figure is set out below as the developer's own. Everything else — release status, plot dimensions, price per square foot — is a question for Wincasa to check against the current position rather than a number to guess at.

Geographically this is southern Dubai rather than the coastal city. The area sits inland of Jebel Ali, in the corridor that runs down past Dubai Investment Park towards Dubai South and Al Maktoum International Airport, with Sheikh Zayed Road and Emirates Road as the two arteries. That corridor is where most of the emirate's new industrial, logistics and aviation employment has gone, and where a good deal of its future housing demand will sit. Buying here is a bet on that direction of travel rather than on an existing address, and it should be judged on a ten-year view, not a two-year one.

Who does this suit? Not somebody who needs to move in. It suits a buyer who wants to build a specific house to their own brief and cannot find it in a developer's catalogue, and it suits an investor who wants land in a growth corridor at a lower entry cost than a finished villa in an established community. It does not suit anyone who needs rental income soon, because a plot produces none until something stands on it. Anyone in the second category should price in design fees, authority approvals, connection charges, a contractor's programme and the cost of carrying the plot while it is empty.

Before committing, ask for four things in writing: the plot's exact area and boundaries, the approving authority for that zone and its building regulations, the infrastructure hand-over position for roads, power, water and drainage on that specific plot, and the payment schedule. On process, an enquiry comes to Wincasa, the sale and purchase agreement is signed with Meraas, and every instalment goes into the project's escrow account registered with the Dubai Land Department — never to the broker. That escrow protection applies to off-plan land in the same way it applies to off-plan apartments, and it is one of the reasons a plot bought this way differs from a private land deal.